First Look: September 8 (September 8, 2010)
An iPhone app developer struggles with speed … Does ethnicity pay? … The state of trade and FDI data.
Mindful Leadership: When East Meets West (September 7, 2010)
Harvard Business School professor William George is fusing Western understanding about leadership with Eastern wisdom about the mind to develop leaders who are self-aware and self-compassionate. An interview about his recent Mindful Leadership conference taught with a Buddhist meditation master.
How Transparent Should Boards Be? (September 2, 2010)
Online forum open through September 22. Jim Heskett asks: As a director for HP, would you have dismissed the CEO? Why? Does your action reflect your views about board transparency? How transparent should boards be? What do you think?
Multinational Firms, Labor Market Discrimination, and the Capture of Competitive Advantage by Exploiting the Social Divide (August 31, 2010)
Women and ethnic minorities are frequently discriminated against in the labor markets of both developed and emerging economies, particularly in opportunities for management positions. Multinationals entering such markets must decide whether to aggressively hire and promote the excluded group, thus reaping the benefits of their underutilized talent, or conform to local practice and avoid provoking some bigoted policymakers, executives, purchasers, and/or supply agents. In this paper, HBS professor Jordan Siegel, Lynn Pyun, and B.Y. Cheon find that multinationals gain significant competitive opportunities by scanning the host-market social landscape, identifying social schisms in the labor market, and exploiting such schisms by actively hiring and promoting members of the excluded group to positions of management responsibility.
First Look: August 31 (August 31, 2010)
Increasing productivity in repetitive tasks … No recession blues for the pet industry … Scaling up community forums